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This week, we had big troubles on our mailserver at VTK. The big ugly devil was sendmail. He stopped delivering mails to local users. After trying to fix it, wich didn't make it work, Lennert and Ikke installed postfix on the machine. Everything is working now, but there's one big issue: sendmail still had 240 messages in /var/spool/mqueue, wich he had to deliver but never did. Now, I want postfix to deliver these. I already did some research, but all I found was "put the files in /var/spool/mqueue.in" wich is a Q for postfix on some configurations. We don't have such a configuration. We have /var/spool/postfix/incoming (and so on) with lots of folders (1,2,3...,A,B,...) in it with the same kind of subfolders in. I don't know where to put those files in now.

If someone nows how to make postfix handle these messages, or how to make sendmail just send these messages to some smtp-server (but not handle the incoming ones), please let me know. Thanks.

Final Year Thesis and Internship

I've made my decision about my final year thesis. Next year, I hope to do something about wireless network access on trains. There'll be a WLAN on the train, with a base station on the train, and the train itself will communicate with antennas next to the railway. Because of the high speed of the train, there will be a handover to the next antenna every two seconds. In my thesis, I'll have to study and test those handovers. This is my first choice, I also had to give a second one. That one is about using the eID (elektronic identity card) for authentication in MHP (Multimedia Home Platform), the digitaly television platform that will be used soon in Flanders. You can find more information about both subjects on the INTEC website. The first one is at the research group IBCN (INTEC Broadband Communication Networks) while the second one is at WICA wich stands for Wireless and Cable. Both topics are part of the research in the newly constructed IBBT, Interdisciplinary institute for BroadBand Technology, founded by the Flemish Government.

I also had a meeting with a few people of the IBCN group for an internship related to that thesis. He'll try to arrange one at Siemens or at Televic. If he can't get an internship there, I'll accept the proposal of Barco to study the development of a L2/L3 multicast gigabit switch.

VTK

It was kind of an active week for VTK. At wednesday, we had ParkingPoP, a rock contest for local groups, wich was a big success. At wednesday and thursday, there were elections for the new board of VTK. Our followers are Bram and Pierre and I'm sure they'll do a great job. We had a meeting where we explained what we did this year and our vision about the next year. It seems they want to do great things, let's hope they've enough time for it. Before that meeting, I also had a lunch-meeting in a nice restaurant with the head of The Computer Store, the shop with the most ugly site in Ghent where we had a deal to sell computers. He claims our deal with Dell also has some disadvantages where he can be better, building on the very good results of the previous years. I've discussed it at the meeting with our followers and it seems they see more disadvantages than andvantages with them as partner, next to Dell.

Ah, before I forget, Lennert (who had a blog here before) is elected for treasurer with 16 votes more (on a total of 564) than his opponents. Congratulations and lots of succes!

Student representation

I didn't sign in for the VTK elections, because I've some other things in mind. I decided to run for the election of vice-president of the Ghent Student Council. The election is in oktober, but it isn't possible to combine this with another year in the VTK praesidium. If I don't make it, no problem, I'll be busy enough with my other work for the student representation, my final year thesis and of course my girlfriend who feels a little bit neglected sometimes ;-)

Also in student representation it was quite busy this week. Monday there was the facultairy computer commission with a very interesting point on the shedule: division of some money for new infrastructure. We also talked about the use of our pc-rooms and the troubles with the shortage of capacity. About that last one, we'll prepare a text from the student representation with a call for more available computers. I'll start to prepare that one after this post is finished ;-)

At the meeting with the student representation of our faculty of engineering, we decided to use a new name for our organisation. Now, it was "didactische cel", a term where nobody exactly knows the meaning of, especialy new students don't know who we are. We've chosen the name "FRiS", which stands for "faculty council of engineering students" or "Facultaire Raad voor IngenieursStudenten" in Dutch. It's a new name, invented by our responsible Peter Huyghebaert, to be better known by new students. This week, we also had the monthly faculty council and the deliberation before with the head of our faculty, who was very interested in the situation of the new students of the first year.

Peter Huygebaert

Friday I also went to the general meeting of vzw StudentENmobiliteit (student mobility) for the first time. From now on, I represent the students of our university there, together with two other students. It was a very interesting meeting. I also asked for more posibilities to pump up the tires of our bicycles in Ghent, especially at the campus in Zwijnaarde. The responsibles of our university agreed, so soon it'll be OK there in Zwijnaarde.

Next week, we'll have the election of the vice-rector of our university. There are two candidates: Luc Moens, from the faculty of sciences, and Paul Kiekens, from our faculty. Again, it'll be a very interesting time :-)

Politics

This week, I recieved an invitation to visit the Flemish Parliament and the new headquarter of the Flemish political party N-VA. Seems also very interesting, so wednesday I'll do the trip to Brussels.

The Flemish Parliament

My lovely girlfriend...

is so curious now :-D Because her cellular is malfunctioning, I bought her a new one. At the 6th of May, it's her birthday. So now, I've put the box in a cabinet and she doesn't may look inside of it. It's so tempting, it's so close, but I trust her not to look in it :-D She doesn't know wich one allready.

Before I forget

Don't create a banana republic here please ;-)

Very busy week -> zero lessons followed... :-/

Monday wasn't that hard, just the usually stuff at VTK. In the evening, we had a fire drill: very good one, everyone was out of the building in a new time record. It was the last one this year, so the next time the alarm goes of, it's real.

Tuesday we had an information evening about VTK and being a board member of VTK. I'm going for "external relations", but I heard somebody else'll do it too. So it'll be a very hard time to get enough votes.

After that, we went with a few people of the student representation to a very good restaurant, Caf

Again, I can say it was a very busy week, last one. But I enjoyed it very much! Movie week was good, the party was great. Many good-looking girls at the party, more than normal on engineers-parties ;-) You can see some pictures here and here. I helped cleaning up in the morning, saw my bed only between 8h30 and 13h XX(

That evening, after the party, I went to Brussels, for a meeting with the "workgroup international" of the VVS, the Union of Students in Flanders. There were some political points to discuss. Points I earlier thought of "far away from my bed", but now I've a better sight at the possible impact of them. Very, very important. We discussed about GATS, an agreement between the EU and the USA to let the European insurance companies operate at the american market. No problem with that, but as a return, the Americans want the EU to open our "education market" so they could start private high schools in Europe, privately funded, to fight at our public founded schools, delivering a quality of the best ones in Europe and the rest of the world. With that agreement, students should be seen as a consumer, where you get more if you pay more, instead of as an equal civilian, where everybody has the same rights. Very dangerous situation, I think.

Ex-commissioner Frits Bolkestein
wiki-page: English - Dutch
Another thing we discussed is the Bolkestein-directive (Dutch - English) wich is almost equally, but only about the circulation of services (including education!) in the European Union. You can say "why not? It's good that I can go to an Irish school here in Flanders for example", but then you're falling under the Irish law. For example in Poland you don't have that much privacy-protection and social-protection as you have here, you don't have that good environment-protection as you have here and you also don't have that good educational quality as you have here because our final terms (directed by the Flemish Government) would be appropriate anymore. It can have a very big impact here and can reduce our very good social and environmental protection systems. So, please, sign the petition against that directive. A few days ago, I also red an article in the newspaper about a change of the Bolkestein directive: the "county of origin" part should be modified so that if they start here a Polish school/company, they're falling under our laws instead of the Polish ones. Seems a good evolution then.
International student representation/politics, I like it more and more. It gets more interesting every day.

At VTK, I think our firewall is ready. Now I just need to find out how to configure the DNS-server and then we can give it a test. Tomorrow we'll decide how many people our praesidium will count next year. We also have to vote if "computer" will remain with two people or not. Let's see...

My girlfriend is sick, she has the flu. Seems very hard for her. She's got tears in her eyes from her sore throat and has to throw up. Let's hope I don't get it from her.

Influenza Virus photo

Some good news about the Workgroup Free Software! With the very busy first semester and the exams, it has been very quite around it. But now, I think it's time for a revival. Pieter has sent an e-mail about a linux-lesson with a liveCD to let the people meet linux in a safe environment without any risk. Seems a very good plan to demonstrate the power of linux, liveCD's and free software. A lesson about image manipulation with The Gimp is also in the running. Now, a meeting should be planned quite fast to organise those things. Normally, the meeting'll be on wednesday, 17h15 @ VTK. Feel free to join us! Let's hope it's a big succes and that it can open the eyes of lots of people for the power of free software!

Wilber, The GIMP mascotte

While searching for the nice image above, I also found these interesting links: Linux and Scooby-Doo, GIMP's Film Version and The CinePaint Project.

It was quite hard to solve the problem I pointed at here. After a while we finally discovered the filesystem was quite corrupt, so configuration files were damaged. smb.conf was quite fast fixed, but the sendmail configuration was terrible. Thanks to Femi, it's solved. Let's hope we can soon migrate to our new server configuration, without sendmail.

Yesterday, I placed the prices of our Dell-computers online. Now all people can buy them by e-mail, but ikke and Bram are working at an e-shop to automate the whole thing. ikke told me the database structure (and implementation) is ready now, so I can insert the data. Already three computers (all Dell Latitude D800's, the notebook topmodel) are sold. Seems good B-)

This week we have Filmweek (movieweek) and Lentefuif (spring party) at VTK. Let's watch some movies and have a great party this week!

Also some bad news in politics. The European Council and Commission told they'll ignore the desicion of the Parliament to restart the whole software patents direction. It seems there will be a big conflict between those two European institutes. They'll try to vote the direction as an A-item (without discussion) on the next meeting. Some national parliaments already decided they can not accept such things, so let's see what happens. Let's hope they can counter such a boycot of democracy. More information about the desicion here.

Another bad thing coming towards us, is the pc-taxes for copyright. As I mentoined here, some political parties are trying to push a proposal that creates a tax of 40 euro on each computer sold. The money should go to music companies as compensation for the (illegal) copying of their music with computers. Normally, there wouldn't be a majority for that. One of the governing parties, SP.a announced in the media that they were a great opponent of those taxes. Now, they're breaking because of the pressure of another party, VLD to approve the proposal. Stupido's.

Hehe, my girlfried has red the previous post and the piece about her. Than she looks at me in a way she makes me completely crazy. Oh, I love her so much :-D

Sunday, I went to FOSDEM. It was good, some good talks. I visited the desktop tracks about KDE and XFCE, some developer rooms: Gentoo ("Gentoo Documentation Project", missed "Enterprise Java on Gentoo"), Mozilla and Debian ("Fully automatic Linux installations"). Because of some delay, they really messed up the lightning talks, so I missed VideoLAN, wich was very impressive at the booth. FAI was one of the most interesting talks. I think we'll use it for the Linux@UGent project because there's not so much swing in Fedora Stateless. They even don't talk about it for FC4.

And now: let's build a firewall!